Storage cabinets and containers as used in the health care industry include built-in cabinets, stand-up shelving, carts, desks, lockers, dispensing trays, and a wide variety of specialty units serving the particular needs of examining rooms, waiting rooms, special procedure rooms, pharmacies, operating and recovery rooms, storage rooms, and intermediate locations. This aggregate of storage and hospital or health care material handling equipment has become known by the term "casework." A health care facility, such as a hospital, will often employ a wide variety of casework, much of which has been configured or designed so that it serves the special needs of the health care provider or the patient at a particular site. Therefor such casework often is not compatible or interchangeable with casework at a different site, and it often cannot easily be reconfigured to a different use at the some site. A health care facility may thus have a substantial investment in less than full functional casework.
The logistics of handling and moving medical supplies may be appreciated by understanding that thousands of sterile and non-sterile medical supplies are required, and are either held or retained in storage, or are ordered from medical suppliers on an "as-needed" basis. These include such items as surgical sponges, drapes, basins, needles, instruments, and medications, much of which is intended for a single use.
The problems of storage and maintenance of inventory have lead to the practice of collecting into groups many, if not all, of the disposable medical items anticipated for particular procedures, which items may be grouped, prepackaged, and delivered in a just-in-time fashion from a medical supplier. Such items and products may be collected in a "procedure tray" which must be moved as necessary to follow the procedure or the patient. These requirements of mobility and interchangeability of function distinguish health care casework from conventional office cabinets, desks, storage and document filing facilities.
As procedures evolve, and as the utilization of health care spaces change, casework and cabinetry which had been configured for a particular purpose may no longer suit the needs of its present location. Such cabinetry can impede, rather than aid, in the mobility of supplies, and may fail to provide proper storage or protection for such supplies.
In view of the high cost of initial acquisition and installation, there is a need to provide a casework arrangement and system by which the internal storage modes of certain casework may be changed and/or converted at a minimum expense and trouble.
While commonality and interchangeability of storage modes has been proposed, and to some extent has been utilized, a particularly difficult and unresolved problem resides in the full utilization of drawer-type bases and cabinets which have been configured to have particular drawer sizes and uses. Commonly such cabinets have permanent drawer gliding or drawer supporting structures which impede or prevent the conversion of such a cabinet to another use.
A particular need exists for a cabinet system which provides for internal conversion from a pull drawer mode to a slide-type or bin storage mode, such as for supporting and retaining tubs, wire shelving, baskets and the like. Such slide-type containers are commonly stored in tambour-door or vertical type storage cabinets which have multiple access or slotted side walls. These bins, baskets and shelving cannot be fitted into existing drawer-type casework.
The lack of compatibility or flexibility can render useless the drawer-type cabinets, at a high economic loss to the facility. A need therefore exists for drawer-type storage cabinets which may be fully converted to sliding shelf or tub-type storage easily and at minimum expense, and back again to drawer type, whenever the need for such conversion arises.